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[QUOTE="SWC75, post: 653588, member: 289"]
I have two methods I use to rate teams. Neither is perfect, (no method is) but they are worth looking at.  The first one I call “point differential rankings”. The formula is this: if your team beat an opponent by more than anyone else did, or tied an opponent that won all their other games or lost to an all-conquering opponent by the smallest margin, you get a “1”. If one team did better than you did, you get a “2”. If two teams did better, you get a “3”, and so on. It measures both power and consistency.  It also compares your team not just to their opposition but to all the teams the opposition played, which will typically include teams from all parts of the country and all the major conferences. Finally, it’s a great way to compare teams of different years and eras because it doesn’t matter how high or low scoring the era was.  It doesn’t matter if you got a “1” for beating a team 50-0 or for beating them 20-0. It just matters that it was a “1”. Here is how the 1959 Syracuse and Mississippi rate in “point differential rankings”:
 
SYRACUSE
Beat Kansas by 14: no one did better so that’s a “1”
Beat Maryland by 29: “1”
Beat Navy by 26: “1”
Beat Holy Cross by 36; Penn State beat them by 46 so that’s a “2”
Beat West Virginia by 44: “1”
Beat Pittsburgh by 35: “1”
Beat Penn State by 2; Pittsburgh beat them by 15, so that’s a “2”
Beat Colgate by 71: “1”
Beat Boston U. by 46: “1”
Beat UCLA by 28: “1”
Beat Texas by 9: “1”
 
Syracuse gets no extra credit for this but it’s worth noting that the Orange beat both of the teams whose performance against an opponent topped theirs. Overall, SU scored nine 1’s and two 2’s in 11 games, a total of 13, which divided by 11 gives them a ranking of 1.18.
 
MISSISSIPPI
 
Beat Houston by 16: Texas A&M beat the Cougars by 22 and Texas Tech beat them by 27 so that’s a “3”
Beat  Kentucky by 16 Auburn beat them by 33, so that’s a “2”
Beat Memphis State by 43: “1”
Beat Vanderbilt by 33: “1”
Beat Tulane by 46: “1”
Beat Arkansas by 28: “1”
Lost to Louisiana State by 4: Tennessee beta them by 1 the next week and Ole Miss’s own Sugar Bowl performance tops it, too: “3”
Beat Chattanooga by 58: “1”
Beat Tennessee by 30: “1”
Beat Mississippi State by 42: “1”
Beat LSU in the Sugar Bowl by 21: “1”
 
That’s a total of 16 ranking points, (eight 1’s, a 2 and two 3’s) in 11 games, an average of 1.45. That’s not as good as Syracuse but it’s pretty darn good. Some years back I figured the point differential rankings for every team that had been ranked #1 by any of those NCAA “major selectors” for  last 50 years, (the second half) of the 20th century. Here was the top ten of those teams:
 
1)[FONT=Times New Roman]      [/FONT]Alabama 1973                                                                    1.08
2)[FONT=Times New Roman]      [/FONT]Syracuse 1959                                                                    1.18
3)[FONT=Times New Roman]      [/FONT]Nebraska 1995                                                                  1.25
4)[FONT=Times New Roman]      [/FONT]Notre Dame 1966                                                             1.30
5)[FONT=Times New Roman]      [/FONT]Ohio State 1973                                                                1.36
6)[FONT=Times New Roman]      [/FONT]Florida State 1993                                                            1.38
7)[FONT=Times New Roman]      [/FONT]Oklahoma 1956                                                                 1.40
8)[FONT=Times New Roman]      [/FONT]Southern California 1972 and Oklahoma 1986      1.42
9)[FONT=Times New Roman]      [/FONT]Maryland 1953 and Mississippi 1959                         1.45
10)[FONT=Times New Roman]   [/FONT]Nebraska 1971                                                                  1.54
 
 
So a 1959 match-up between Syracuse and Mississippi would have been a battle of two of the most consistently dominant teams of the second half of the twentieth century.
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